Pollyanna
by 616
Summary: In an unmade new world where everything is—or has the potential to be—right again, Lucas learns just what or whom he has freed when he pulled the Needle. Even with his family reunited and his friends safe, the revelation serves as one last reminder and a warning against the frightening cost of building worlds on buried secrets.
1. Chapter 1

**AUTHOR'S NOTE**  
Heavily WIP, if I decide to expand on it into something of a series. Takes place during and directly after Mother 3's ending and the credits. The title is a working one for now.

* * *

There was talking. Lucas stared down at Claus, at the body of his brother in his arms. Lucas felt numb and there was a ringing in his ears, drowning out most else. Lucas had seen his twin's face after three years because Claus had removed his mask and returned to himself just for that moment and spoken to him, had smiled at him. And then there was lightning and a flash of painless light-on-metal-crash-burn and then Claus was there and Lucas was holding him and then Claus was dead and Lucas held his dead twin numbly in his arms.

Flint was saying things. He said some things about Claus, and about Lucas, and gave his living son some more words about forgiveness and of support and Lucas wasn't listening. He was holding Claus's body in his arms. There were the others entreating Lucas with more and more words still and their voices were so full of earnestness and encouragement and Lucas barely heard a word of it, barely felt anything as he gently lowered his precious brother to the ground and then eyed the Needle.

Claus was the Masked Man. Claus was dead. Lucas felt—dead, too, maybe? Felt nothing. Felt purpose. Shock and numbness replaced everything else and kept him in once piece as he stood and walked to the final Needle because now, he understood what must be done. Because Claus was dead yet Porky was not, and never would be dead. And this world could never hold the weight of that even if Lucas didn't know if he felt strongly about the justice of his situation one way or another.

But Lucas understood like a mantra of a hundred years in those few moments approaching the Needle that this place left to them by the one that had sealed himself away…what even remained of it…this was not right.

No one could stop Lucas from pulling the Needle.

Nothing would.

Flint was done talking. Lucas had left Claus to him, with him. Lucas placed his hands upon the pillar of light, and, trembling, he thought just a fleeting moment in the back of his mind that he dared god himself to try and stop him from doing what had to be done to fix, to _destroy_ this wrong world. To make it stop.

To make it stop.

He did not take a deep breath. He did not brace himself. He simply gripped the wings on the point of light and wrenched it out, the Needle coming free of the earth it pierced as easily those other six before it—

* * *

_Armageddon._


	2. Chapter 2

**Genesis**.

* * *

It was dark. It was new.

Lucas suddenly realized he could feel again. Tears were streaming down Kumatora's face and there was only just enough time to thank the player before—

There was his father. There was _Mom_.

Claus _(and there was Claus)_ had pulled his mask away again. Lucas watched with a sensation unfamiliar lightness in is head and heart, while his brother hugged Flint, then Hinawa, and then ran to him.

Before Lucas quite realized what was happening, he was running too.

Wherever they were going it was—it would be okay, now.


	3. Chapter 3

Lucas only realized their destination when suddenly Claus began to trail behind him, slowing to a gradual stop so that Lucas had to rein his own sprint in to a canter and do the same. He turned backward to face his brother, who stood waiting several meters behind, and confusion crept into Lucas's heart once more.

"C-Claus?"

Claus's eyes snapped brightly to his, perhaps hearing the barest tremble in Lucas's voice, and smiled at him. Claus looked the faintest bit tired from running, but was still alive and bright with eyes reflecting the embers of joy that had warmed their hearts in tandem as they raced like kids. for the first time in so many years—or the first time, without any years behind them in a blank slate? The repercussions were still catching up to Lucas.

But Claus gave a half-shrug with a smile that was perhaps a tad nervous. But it was a nonthreatening nervousness, an almost shy-seeming type of nervous, and Lucas might have sagged with relief at the lack of any disaster imminent when he looked into that face so like his own and saw it full of understanding and reassurance first and foremost. Because Claus knew. Knew him even after all these years and being dead and being _not_.

"It's all right," Claus said anyway, shifting in place and looking bashfully at his brother and then past him, to some point behind Lucas's head. "I just…I just think it should be you, first. By yourself, you now?"

A bit mystified but drawn by Claus's words, Lucas turned his head to follow the other's gaze, and saw what he supposed he knew had been their destination once more from the same point they'd left it.

The smoking crater in the ground was difficult to see in the sunless scope of the island or what raw material was left behind in place of one for them to walk around, but Lucas could identify with immediacy the place Claus had died only a Needle's pull ago, where the final point of light came free of the earth in Lucas's hands. A lifetime back already, no longer than that ago. It…had been a true universe apart from this new reality, which even now, had not yet truly begun to solidify into anything beyond a sea of living faces no longer marred by the tragedy that had now been wiped away in brimstone and fire. And left them all with a pensive darkness that was nonthreatening but full of opportunity and…hope.

And Lucas had seen as much with his own eyes or perhaps without them in the dark. He'd gone and spoken to the survivors of the apocalypse, had seen his family reunited. He'd waited for Claus—living, breathing, organic, whole—to join Lucas at his place near the end of the scrawling parade of remembered faces, and then they both simply knew to push their legs into a a walk and from there to a jog then a run. It was the moment Lucas had so longed to earn for all his suffering, had not dared to dream for, but would have gladly taken if it were a dream if only because that meant it could possibly be dreamed _again_ and what better way to feel alive than to pump your legs and run?

But, this was no dream, Lucas understood. And there would be more time for reunions and precious moments in the new world. This was going to be a new world. So first, he had to go and work out what the shape of it, and to do that…

He looked back at Claus. Claus gave Lucas one more reassuring smile. Lucas returned it with one of his own (somehow sensing, and then marveling how _he_ was better at conveying the emotion now than Claus would be, how used Lucas had gotten to the role of the one being depended upon without wanting it), and then walked back toward the crater where he must find now and greet the Dark Dragon of legend that he had woken.


	4. Chapter 4

He stepped gingerly into the crater, which still emitted a slow and puffy stream of smoke at its center from the Needle's now-empty spot. Lucas walked closer slowly to the gap in the earth and squinted through the—darkness? emptiness?—to try and make out anything, anything at all that might be resting underground beneath the surface. A dark shape, an eye, a pointed claw or wing…

Something shifted, low in the dark, drifting smoke. Lucas's eyes widened as a small shape stirred near the ground, a figure that became steadily more visible through the smoke and began to unfurl. The small body shifted from a sleeper's fetal position to a slow, painful-looking rise, sitting on its knees in a tangle of limbs and muscles that looked very unwieldy and noncooperative and clearly aching from disuse.

And very much like a human.

This couldn't…this couldn't be correct. Heart hammering, Lucas took a few more steps forward to make sure his eyes weren't tricking him, to make sure he wasn't just seeing things in shadows in the smoke.

And there was a boy.

A _boy_. A boy smaller than Lucas or even Claus, seemingly even than the memory of him, pale but with soot-covered skin and dazed. The boy sat on knobby-kneed, trembling legs at the same puncture within the earth where the Needle had been before, where Lucas had yanked it out.

Lucas was frozen watching him, speechless and any grand speeches he'd been half-rehearsing gone in a mental puff of bewilderment. The boy coughed from the smoke pouring out beneath him and the action seemed to use up more strength than he had in the entirety of his skinny frame. Still, he managed a few long moments later to lift his head with a measure of seeming difficulty and stare up at Lucas with teary, wide-blown eyes. The boy sniffled and his pupils were so dilated that there was no way to tell the color of his eyes as he gazed at Lucas with some mixture of emotion that could have been unfamiliarity or fear or awe. A portrait, of something small and hopelessly lost.

"D-Did you," the boy finally stammered, when it became possibly obvious that Lucas was not going to say anything. He stopped to cough weakly for a moment, unsteadily bracing on his palms against the ground while Lucas just kind of gaped at him. "Did…you…p-pull the Needle out?"

Lucas felt he'd forgotten how to speak. His head was spinning and his mouth was very dry at the sight of exactly what the apocalypse had bequeathed upon him. This was not a fearsome dragon with the power to carry entire islands on its shoulders. "…A-Ah–…m…"

The boy sniffled again and made a sound that wasn't a full cough, too weak to do the thing properly. "Did'jou…pull the Needles out?" the boy repeated again, plaintive and a little afraid. And Lucas saw, bewildered, a hint of anxiety in him that seemed more to hinge on Lucas's actions in that moment that the boy was waiting for than the other way around.

"Y…Yah?" Lucas stammered, feeling very stupid.

The boy's face fell, or—or recomposed into an expression like understanding or resignation, maybe? He breathed raggedly and his head dropped, so his eyes now half-lidded were partially hidden beneath tangled locks of black hair that stuck out in all directions. He seemed to be braced for something unfamiliar and not much welcome.

"Understood…" he said quietly, his voice soft and a little uneven in Lucas's ears like it was hard for the boy to breathe. "…Master."

Lucas blanched, recoiling at the word as if struck with physical force. The boy didn't seem to notice, staying quiet with his words still hanging heavy in the air.

Then:

"Th-That's good. I was scared that you didn't…didn't have a heartbeat…some of the times…" The voice was weakly optimistic but full of cracks, the tone of someone trying to convince themselves. But in volume it was fading fast. The boy's eyes closed and he swayed where he sat on his knees in alarming exhaustion.

Lucas's mind blanked completely. Working on autopilot, he walked the rest of the way to the Needle-less hole in the ground and knelt down, arms automatically reaching out to catch the boy as he lost consciousness and went boneless in Lucas's hold. Heart racing, Lucas lifted him out with unsettling ease, and did the only thing he could. He walked back out of the crater again and headed toward the spot where his brother waited, inevitably on pins and needles to see what the blond twin had found.

Lucas wasn't sure what he'd tell him. The boy he was holding of indeterminate age was no dragon, that was for sure. He was no great and terrible creature of apocalyptic strength from the legends…

Lucas's mind was a jumble.

But if that was the case, Lucas wondered uneasily as his footfalls worked in time with the slight breaths of air against his collarbone, then…then where had the meteors come from?

Why were his loved ones alive again?


	5. Chapter 5

**AUTHOR'S NOTE**  
I really need to restructure these chapters or combine the first four to go in one part or something so this one doesn't just stick out as a huge mass of story overload from nowhere…at some point. And proofread, all the way through, I should do that.

This chapter has some content warnings, including a character experiencing a PTSD-related triggering experience.

* * *

It's a few days before Lucas is able to ask.

They have to hike their way back to Tazmily across fresh, newly forested terrain over the islands that's easy to see around in despite the easing darkness not yet giving way to anything like the dawn of a morning sun. The villagers are collectively trusting more than knowing for certain their old home will be there in some form or another when they get there. Though at least Claus voices (and Lucas suspects) that Tazmily will be its old self, same as it was before the Pigmasks arrived.

The unknown boy Lucas found in the crater that remained of the last Needle still isn't able to walk or even stand on his own. The boy hasn't so much as opened his eyes again since his initial bewildering exchange with Lucas, who had to carry him back alongside Claus to the others that were waiting for them if puzzled that they'd returned with a stranger instead of news of the Dark Dragon.

There are signs the boy _is_ awake as they make their way to Tazmily. He doesn't speak and rarely opens his eyes but Hinawa can usually get him to drink some water at least if he's propped upright when they stop as a group to rest or set up camp. Flint carries the boy on his back without complaint for most of journey—it's obvious that conscious or not, the boy is too weak to stand, let alone walk. Lucas is grateful to his father for doing it without being asked. He and Claus have heated discussions about what the boy's presence means or who he could be but it's all speculation going nowhere and is really little more than an excuse to hear each other's voices, if either of them would admit it to themselves.

Tazmily is indeed waiting for them some four days later when they finish the walk there. "They" being all the village's former citizens now sticking as closely together in spirit as once they'd been, along with a fair few newly homeless denizens of New Pork tagging along as refugees. Not all the buildings are whole or complete as they once were. But the foundation of the town is back to its old self and the houses that are intact are made of the old, rustic interiors and simple furnishings that once defined Tazmily and the Happy Boxes are gone.

There's enough room to at least put a roof over everyone's heads, not that it's necessary. The villagers are weary from travel but not so far removed from their memories of the old way of life that camping out is in any way new or dangerous in the now-heavily forested areas permeating the land where the village resides. They've discovered along the way home to everyone's relief that the repopulated animals are as friendly and talkative now as they once were. What's far more a surprise is how any remaining animal chimeras act no differently when the humans encounter them; the hybrids that endured the apocalypse are living happily side by side with their wild neighbors with perfect politeness. Without Porky's influence it seems they have no reason to be aggressive, and so the villagers and the non-villagers accept the new order in stride and enter the forest without fear for the materials Tazmily will need to rebuild.

All this gets filed away somewhere in Lucas's brain where useful information goes when he needs to call on it, though all he can really think about after getting home is being home with his family since it turns out that Flint and Hinawa's house among all the others is a perfect reconstruction of how it once was. Lucas supposes (with less guilt than exhaustion, admittedly) that this was probably his doing somehow, even if he has no idea exactly how or why things happened the way they have since the Needle was pulled. The rest of Tazmily ushers his family in to their familiar home on the outskirts of the village to enjoy the house in its wholeness and tell them to rest instead of allowing them to participate in rebuilding or helping the new members of the town find homes.

Flint and Hinawa exchange glances and take stock of their children—plus the mystery black-haired boy, who blinks sleepily at the new surroundings for a moment before returning his attention as usual to Lucas from over Flint's shoulder—and then the couple tiredly acquiesce.

The doorknob is missing from their front door, they realize collectively as they approach the house that's otherwise identical to how the four of them last remember it.

But then, they suppose, just leaving it be that way and letting the door stand open feels symbolically like a good omen.

* * *

The boy is ushered in to living in their home with them for now, and he probably will be for a while. None of the family have really discussed yet the long-term implications of what that could mean. It's enough trying to settle back into a house they can't believe feels more real and solid and true to 'back then' than they'd even obsessed over at the lowest pits of nostalgia.

Lucas is nervous. He feels responsible for the boy and uncertain; the Magypsies never told him anything like this related to the Needles and he hasn't spoken yet to any of their lingering spirits in his dreams. A suspicion lingers that perhaps they don't know what is happening either, and so are deliberately avoiding him.

Claus is nervous too. But all the more so he's curious. Oddly it seems he's excited to unravel a mystery surrounding someone new and unknown. This black-haired boy in their house is not only a mystery but one tied most auspiciously to Lucas's role in this new world; by proxy, all the unknowns surrounding him are focused well away from Claus himself. It's a welcome distraction to the older twin to re-explore something as simple as human curiosity again without the need to touch on any of his own memories he isn't ready yet to unpack.

(Regarding the boy, Flint is curious, but reserved in his judgement. Or maybe he merely trusts Lucas's more than his own. Either way he'd more or less volunteered them all to welcome the odd extra child into their family's care the moment Claus and Lucas had returned from the crater, and the latter had been valiantly struggling to carry the black-haired stranger not much shorter than himself with his very tired shoulders.)

(Hinawa in her way bothered not even to ask questions. She accepted the new addition her younger son had brought to them without so much as a raised eyebrow. She lets Flint do the heavy lifting during the trek back to Tazmily, when the unknown boy still can't walk, and takes the remaining portion of the boy's care under her umbrella in stride. That part of her hasn't changed, though there is a new mindfulness they all notice for her never to let Claus in particular out of her sight, no matter what or how short the task at hand. At least, not without his brother or father accompanying him. Lucas doesn't mind this; he's all but bending over backward to keep both his brother and the odd unexplained boy in his sights at all times. Claus doesn't seem to know how to feel about the new status quo of their treatment of him. He hardly knows how to identify the feelings he does have half the time as it stands, now that they're returned to him on the inside of his human self like the metal parts that got restored to flesh and bone.)

* * *

"Ah…hey, how are you feeling?"

The boy looks over at Lucas, expression a bit startled. It's not a moment before he schools it back to a careful blank, though the mask has cracks.

He's sitting up on his own now, after half a day resting at Lucas's family home where they'd set the boy up on one of the twins' beds as a temporary measure while they settled themselves once more in the rest of the house instead. By the time Lucas has gone to check on him the boy seems the most lucid he's been since they met, which is a welcome if nerve-wracking change.

It's taken so long for the boy to reach a point where one of them doesn't have to carry or at least support him if he wants to move the slightest bit, any at all. Not that he's terribly vocal about _anything_ he wants, beyond what they can guess that he seems to agree to. Lucas is nervous about any reasons he can theorize for where that much intense weakness could be coming from.

"…"

The boy breathes in and out for a few long moments with his eyes averted. Lucas bites his lip. He doesn't think the boy is actually going to answer.

Eventually, the boy surprises him and does. His voice is so quiet that Lucas (and Claus, hovering without bothering subtlety behind him) have to strain to hear it.

"I'm doing well," the boy whispers, fingers bunched anxiously in the sheets of the bed. His eyes flicker up to Lucas's a moment and then just as quickly away. "…Better, I mean. Thank you."

The boy looks pretty nervous. Maybe even scared. It's the first time he's spoken that Lucas has heard since Lucas found him in that crater.

Lucas remembers with a churning in his stomach what the boy had called him then. He's not—he isn't Porky.

He really wants to say that aloud. And there's so much he wants to ask. But Lucas's shyness or self-doubt is suddenly locking his tongue so he can't say anything. The boy isn't saying anything, either, and seems to be holding his breath for Lucas to talk which makes the problem worse. Maybe he expects Lucas to make some demand of him or start questioning and wants to avoid it. Maybe the boy just isn't good at talking in general. Lucas isn't exactly the picture of extroversion himself. He understands that feeling very well.

If it weren't for Claus, they probably would never get anywhere at all…

"So, spill it. Just what are you, anyway?" Claus finally demands of the boy after nearly a full minute of silence among the three of them.

…which may not be a good thing.

Lucas cringes at his brother's embarrassing directness. He exclaims loudly, "_Claus!_"

"What? You're dying to know, too, aren't you?" Claus says impatiently.

The black-haired boy glances between the two of them, looking mystified, dark eyes wide with anxious confusion growing more obvious with every second. "Um," he says with some alarm. "Excuse me?"

Claus turns away from Lucas and back to the boy on the bed. Claus folds his arms, the picture of the analyzing detective, and fixes the black-haired boy with an appraising look.

"Well, Lucas says you appeared when the last Needle—I mean, he said you were right there in the same place after," Claus says, impulsive nature sparing him the effort of having to actually think before he changes his words on instinct to avoid the wrong ones. A tongue that moves faster than his brain isn't usually one of Claus's positive points, but it's undeniably a handy coping tool for maneuvering carefully around those phrasings now that might stick on recent memories he's prepared to touch on as a landmine. "When we went back to the spot, and Lucas went to go look, he says you were already there at the center. And looking like you'd just been asleep right before that too!"

The boy looks more nervous and more confused the longer Claus speaks. There's a quick glance in Lucas's direction—whether a plea for help, or trying to ask some permission, Lucas isn't quick enough on the uptake to figure out. Let alone speak up on the boy's behalf, when Lucas can't even find a proper moment in all this to pipe up (his old timidity rearing its head) to tell Claus to knock it off.

The boy is on his own and so finally, hesitantly he answers. "Well—yes?" A beat, and then he elaborates, clearly not sure in the least what Claus is expecting to hear. "That's all true, I guess. If…you know, he told you that, then he wasn't lying."

"No, duh. 'Course he wasn't!" Claus snaps, not angry per se but simply impatient (_as always, how he is_). Hasty. He hasn't had the time to consider over what it takes to change, yet, not really. "That's not what I meant."

"Claus," Lucas interrupts softly.

Claus stops, looked at his twin. Lucas gives him a look in return that he hopes conveys _That's enough, let me try now, please, _and then Lucas turns again to smile weakly at the boy frozen on the bed. Lucas clears his throat.

"What he means is…w-well, we went back to the place the Needle was because we were going to meet the Dark Dragon," he starts, hoping more than anything he can tell the story properly in case the boy has never heard of it and thinks Lucas is crazy. "The dragon that's, you know, supposed to have been sleeping beneath the Nowhere Islands all this time. And the world did reset and even those people have come back to life, so…" Lucas stammers on, feeling too silly and anxious over what he's saying to meet the boy's eyes in case he's about to be ridiculed.

"…S-So I guess my point is, and I know it probably sounds a little weird, but…since I found you there in the same place, and there's no way anyone else could have gotten there so fast, and you _were_ waking up right when all that stuff was happening to the world after I pulled out the last Needle and you already knew about that, I mean, the Needles and, um, all that stuff—"

Why, why doesn't somebody interrupt and please make him stop talking already? Hasn't Lucas already embarrassed himself enough!?

"—I-I guess we're both just wondering if, uh, if you're actually…the dragon?" Lucas knows by now his face has to be brighter and redder than Kumatora's hair, the question sounds so stupid when said aloud. "Um. _Are_ you? The dragon?"

The embarrassment flees when without warning there's a loud _slam_ of a body hitting the wall and a lurching motion in Lucas's peripheral vision. This, and a shout from Claus wrench Lucas's gaze back to the bed in shock, already in instinct yelping out too.

The black-haired boy out of _nowhere_ has violently flung himself backward against the headboard of the bed so his back connects against the hardwood with bruising force. He's also knocked his head hard against the wall behind it before he could stop himself. The loud _crack_ of the impact on his skull sends a quick, sympathetic pang of nausea through Lucas, whose heart is already racing. He rushes a step behind Claus to the bed to try and help.

Against the headboard, the black-haired boy has his head bowed and is making wheezing noises through his mouth like he's suffocating. This somehow, after days of barely being able to lift his head—he's gotten the strength in all of a moment of panic for whatever reason to curl his body tightly in on itself with his knees pulled up against his chest and hands clamped firmly over his ears, eyes scrunched shut. He's paler than even his normal pallid color, like a ghost. Lucas sees that while the boy's mouth works to gasp raggedly without success, desperate pulls for air the only sound he can make, there are also words forming unsaid on his lips between wheezes. It's all happening so fast that Lucas can't even try to interpret.

Neither Lucas nor Claus are able to do anything to help. They get no response when they try and grab at the boy's shoulders to get his attention or ask him what's wrong, only met with the same choking gasps that sound worse with every breath. Both twins nearly trip over each another in their haste to bolt from the room, screaming for Hinawa, their voices echoing against each other in a terrified litany of _hurry, please, hurry, quickly, help._

* * *

With the twins gone, the boy on the bed is left to his own devices, engaged fully in spirit despite his helpless appearance in a fierce, active battle of willpower in his own mind.

For once and likely only once, the onset of an asthma attack may be more of a help than a hindrance in this fight. The necessity of controlling his breathing second by second without any chance at distraction keeps the boy _very_ well tethered to the present, struggling to get air through inflamed passages that had sealed on him in all of an instant from a shock of post-traumatic stress.

He will not dwell on the memories of what happened. This isn't even the same world. He has a job, now, he has a better _life_ to potentially give the people here if that's what the boy called Lucas decides he wants.

Breathe in—no no _in breathe in breathe_ _in_, in, please—yes, yes, oh yes, breathe, breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe…in. Out. In—no, a cough, before he can stop it, but the boy manages to keep it from continuing long enough to knock the wind out of him he'd just gotten back. The seconds tick by like hours. The boy thinks of car fumes, devil trucks with mad faces and exhaust pipes, and manages another inhalation to prove that some demons don't have power over him anymore. He manages to get a good breath in and manages a very weak but triumphant inward smile at the air being pure and cleaner than he could have hoped for in a past lifetime.

He is not thinking about manila envelopes with printed labels.

He is not thinking about aborted phone calls, of men in black clothes and white vans.

He is not thinking about interrogations in white rooms from adults with no kindness in their thoughts that won't call him by his real name and never refer to him by it in conversations with one another, won't even let him say it aloud for himself because they're recording his words and if anyone were to find the tapes later in five or ten, maybe fifteen years, they can't be allowed to know who he was. The can't let any records survive that he, and his friends, his _family_, were real people with names instead of subjects under surveillance and detained because of intelligence and national security and whatever else makes them do things like keep him in locked rooms and give him shots and strange drugs and insist that the codename they gave him is what he's called forever now.

**_SUBJECT: DRAGON_**  
**_SUBJECT ID "DRAGON"_**  
**_SUBJECT '8X-01, CODENAME 'DRAGON'_**

…And so on.

He doesn't think about that.

The boy breathes and breathes, and thinks of nothing else but air. He manages to calm himself that way until the twins and their achingly kind mother return bearing hot tea and medicine. The boy inwardly thanks their actions with fervent, grateful words he's got no strength left to say and prays that even as a single unit away from them the boy Lucas (who had pulled the final Needle from the island's tail) will also still be as kind as the broken, battered heart in him wants to be.

Because the twin called Claus was a little intimidating, but it was the question Lucas had asked that had terrified him above all else. Ninten could survive, he thinks, not being allowed "Ninten" again, if that's what Lucas really wants…

But it will be hard to muster up the willpower from somewhere to make the world how Lucas wants it, if Ninten has to be called by an evil monster (one from the fairy tale he loved so much, so desperately) again.


	6. Chapter 6

"Ninten."

Lucas's voice. Ninten lets his train of thought slide away and shifts a bit on the too-small bed, where he's wedged comfortably against Lucas's left side with Claus already asleep on the right.

It takes a bit more work than Ninten would like, and a still-worrying amount of energy to move enough from where he's laying down so that his words won't be muffled into the fabric of Lucas's pajama shirt. But Ninten does manage it eventually. "…Yeah?"

"That—That is your name, isn't it?" Lucas's voice shakes. Ninten blinks, wondering what's the matter all of a sudden.

Then Ninten feels suddenly through the heart he's newly inherited a stab of _guilt,_ devastatingly painful, piercing through Lucas on his own accord with every word. The sharp and painful emotion crept out of nowhere, in the middle of what had been a peaceful evening, leaving Ninten utterly caught off guard and pained himself trying to untangle the hurt of Lucas's sudden emotions from his own.

Ninten's too occupied to say anything as Lucas presses on, asking him insistently, "Your name is Ninten?"

Ninten blinks. Tries to recompose himself against the sudden wave of intense unhappiness that Lucas is apparently feeling. Why? he wonders. What does Lucas have to be guilty for?

Back to the question. He refocuses. _Ninten_. "That's the name my mother gave me," Ninten says uneasily, the same as he'd told them before.

Next comes the hard part, though, which makes it all the more difficult to be certain he's ready to speak without some slip of the tongue. "You…can call me whatever you want, though," Ninten says in what he hopes is a neutral tone of voice.

Ninten swallows. He is trying, not to let his own emotional reaction to this matter of simple fact seep into his tone, color the words with some unnecessary sense of self-pity or loss. Lucas's burden of pain is about as horrifically intense as Ninten can conceive of one person carrying, if not more so: that much is obvious from inheriting the boy's heart via the final Needle, even if Ninten hasn't yet learned that trauma's particular scale or shape.

The last thing someone in Lucas's position needs is to be worrying about _Ninten's_ hang-ups. Not after the way Ninten already freaked out on him earlier.

"You have the right to do so, I mean," Ninten continues with a forced nonchalance, shrugging one shoulder in case Lucas hasn't gotten the message. Ninten finds he's rattling off the words rather mechanically so he doesn't think too hard about them, and feels a bit cross with himself for it. Lucas is a good person, Ninten reasons internally, scolding himself for being vain over something so relatively unimportant as a name. Not even _that_ name, the CIA's cruel label a name: just any name.

Even if Ninten did something to make Lucas _mad_, or Lucas chose for him in a joking or foul mood, the worst the blond boy could come up with likely isn't anything to be afraid of.

"I'm more or less obligated to answer to whatever you come up with, so it's ultimately your pick," Ninten says blandly. Not smiling, not frowning. "Like I said. You're the one that decides stuff like that, if you choose. You pulled the last—"

**"_Stop it!_"** Lucas shrieks, startling Ninten at once dead silence and causing Claus to jerk from his fitful sleep to total wakefulness on Lucas's other side.

The blond keeps talking, practically shouting, heedless of his tone or that he's frightening anyone: "Stop, stop _talking_ about yourself like you don't—like you _aren't_–!"

Lucas trails off in a wordless cry of rage. He tugs angrily at his blond hair with a half-scream and then a growl of misery-filled frustration. Ninten stares at him, completely at a loss. Claus grips at his brother's arm and demands to know what's going on. Receiving no answer the older twin glares accusingly at Ninten, demanding an explanation and laying blame squarely without having to say a word. Which is a logical enough choice, Ninten acknowledges in the back of his mind in distant bewilderment. It's just—Ninten doesn't _know_ what he did to make Lucas so unhappy.

Even now he can feel a lance of guilt in the blond boy's heart that pierces like a needlepoint through Ninten's own.

He bites his lip. Meets Claus's angry glare. Without much idea of what else there is he can do…he turns his gaze inward to measure his strength of psionic will as a matter of habit, though it's not any difficult thing he's considering to try.

It's the most instinctive PSI ability he has. It's accounted for everything from his inexplicable grade-school popularity to surviving his first asthma attack away from home. It's so effortless Ninten half the time never realized as a child he was doing it, even as an adolescent sometimes slips into the habit unthinkingly for how little conscious will it takes. Even depleted to the last of his reserves, Ninten is quite assured he can afford this. Especially if it'll help him help Lucas.

And so his mind is made. Ninten tries Telepathy.

And—oh.

Oh. That's.

Oh.

Oh…

Ninten reels back a bit, dazed. Neither of the twins any of the wiser for the intrusion.

Ninten feels the world has been spun on him several rounds too fast and knocked him off his feet where he thought he'd stood comfortably in this arrangement with this new would-be home among Lucas's family.

It turns out Lucas is, in fact, a much better person than Ninten's given him credit for.

…And this is after inheriting the very _heart _in him, for cripes' sake.

Ninten can't help himself. He crumples a bit at what he's seen in his savior's thoughts, not noticing the look of confusion Claus is giving him. It's the furthest thing from his mind, in fact.

Ninten breathes in and out to keep from crying. He musters up what strength he has left and takes a deep breath, and then with some difficulty he sits up on the bed, turning guiltily to Lucas.

Lucas glares balefully at him through his hands. On the surface and beneath his eyes are angry and accusing, and in them Ninten alone can read the screams, of _how_–

_how can you stand to be **near** me i'm no better than Porky you were trapped and i **used** you you didn't have free will and now you're telling me to go and just_–

_give you a **name** like you're some **pet** on top of probably _killing_ yourself giving me everything i ever wanted **why** just for finding you first just for being born with rare PSI like i'd never figure out the source of the world coming back really **was** you why are you letting me do this, please i don't want to hurt anyone else __you're the same age as Claus you're the same i'm doing it again **you're the same**_–

_i'm doing what they did to him all over again_–

_—_and. And.

Ninten's face screws up. Maybe, from misplaced hurt, or guilt, for not realizing sooner, probably a million other little things he failed to do for someone that he wanted to help but hadn't bothered to even look at properly and so failed in every, every way.

Lucas's raw glare wavers at Ninten's distress. The blond boy is still upset but unshed tears glisten through his angry stare. And helplessly Claus stares back and forth between them both.

Ninten's breath hitches. Without warning he reaches forward, blindly. And then he's hugging Lucas as hard as he possibly can.

"N-Ninten. Please. Ninten. Call me Ninten," he says, too desperately, too quickly. Emphatic and emotion-choked, and his own voice cracking embarrassingly in his own ears. "P‑Please, just…call me Ninten, okay? That'll make me happy. 'S all I want…I swear…"

Ninten feels Lucas stiffen with shock against him at the unexpected embrace, but he doesn't push him away and Ninten doesn't let go of him either.

Ninten's face stays buried in Lucas's shoulder and he doesn't budge from that spot as he digs through his brain to find the right words, or maybe he can't move even if he wanted to. Ninten's whole body won't stop shaking, in fact—no one's _cared_ what he thought or wanted so deeply for so long_,_ not even himself, not even over his own name…

It actually kind of hurts.

Lucas makes an odd noise in his throat near Ninten's ear that conveys six kinds of disbelief. This even as he reaches up with his own arms to tentatively hug Ninten back. He lets go for a moment to tug Claus closer, too, on the other side; not that Claus has much idea what's going on.

"Stop it. That can't be _all_ you want," Lucas eventually says, targeting Ninten in a rather bitter tone. It's not a bitterness meant at Ninten himself, as evidenced by the next thing out of his mouth being the very singular gesture that Ninten had asked for. His name back. "…Ninten."

For anyone that hasn't seen his thoughts, Lucas is still for all the world accusing, glaring down teary-eyed at the top of Ninten's head. As if daring the black-haired boy to somehow take on and disprove every self-deprecating thought running now through Lucas's mind.

Well, Ninten thinks. He's tackled worse.

"I don't hate you. I'm not scared of you," Ninten says, in the mumbled tones of one reading quickly from a laundry list. He still has not budged an inch from Lucas's shoulder, perhaps to preemptively spare himself some measure of embarrassment. Speeches like this tend to get gushy, at least among his friends (he _hopes_ the twins are his friends. or that they can be), no matter how matter-of-factly Ninten tries to make his point.

"Not anymore, at least," he hurries on, barely enunciating the words with the intent of getting them out that much quicker. "I'm sorry about before I just don't like…th-that _one word_ and when you said it; I'm sorry for being a freak like that, it just happens sometimes. I wasn't thinking about you or anyone, I, I can't really explain it better right now.

"But the rest of it—nobody made me, at least not after the Needle. I wanted to. I wanted to help and come with you, and then try to get to know you, so I could help you. You and everyone you wanted to save, you…you didn't have to. But you did. I'm glad it _was_ you, anyone else, that would have, and I couldn't even believe it at first, that after you were in that much _pain_ you still…I was scared you'd just be ready to end it with asking to make it stop, b-but then you gave 'em a second chance. You gave everyone a chance.

"That's why I think you _can_ do it, y'know?" Ninten finishes hoarsely, not certain or really caring whether he's made a bit of sense. "You're…You're the best chance this world has."

If this disjointed speech has made any impression on the twins, they say nothing for the better part of a minute. Ninten's set in on regretting himself and is trying to think of the best way to backpedal and redo things more slowly, when:

"That's not true," Lucas says, "and wh-why would anyone think so? Because I can use PK Love?"

He shakes his head and buries his face in a hand. "That's just a _fluke_, Ninten. It could have been anyone but me an' Claus—"

"Because _you're a good person!_" Ninten snaps back, finally looking up at him, surreptitiously wiping his own eyes furiously with the back of one hand. "And, whatever you're scared of…I guess, knock it off, Lucas, okay? Because you're not like that. Remember, you gave me your heart and all that junk when you pulled the last Needle out that was making me sleep, I can feel when you're sad or guilty or mad or hurting, or if you had somehow been evil or selfish this whole time, so you can't fool me otherwise even if you wanted to. Ask _him_ if you don't believe me."

Claus huffed. Ninten doesn't have to point his way for the intended recipient of the phrasing to be clear.

"Is this some…some legend-destiny-fulfilling thing that the rest of us aren't in on?" Claus asks, feigning annoyance over his concern as Lucas slowly glanced away from Ninten to look at his twin in kind. "Because I have no idea what you two are talking about. But, if you want to help Lucas out, I guess you must be all right."

Lucas stares at Claus for a while in return, contemplative. He turns Ninten's words over in his head and sniffles a few times, deciding it may be all right to cry if he doesn't go and linger on it for too long.

"This is…this is all that's left of humanity we're talking about. I couldn't even save my own _family_," Lucas whispers in the dark. The words are so soft that everyone in the room has to strain to hear.

Ninten squeezes his hand.

"_I couldn't either_," he says thickly. "But, you—this is another chance, okay? Your mom, your brother…I can still do that much in this world. Please."

He rests his head on Lucas's shoulder again, and this time it is not from exhaustion. Not the physical kind, at least.

"At least so it doesn't have to have all been for nothing, Lucas," he whispers. "_Please…_"

Lucas looks at Claus, struggles to make out his twin's face through the darkness, and his own tears. Claus says nothing but he leans in close to Lucas's other side, holding his brother in a silent embrace. It is a small thing, but it seems to impart whatever nebulous forgiveness Lucas feels he needs.

Lucas holds Claus and Ninten tightly. He nods, not certain what he's promising to them or himself, in this moment of impulse, only that he'll do his best. He won't give up if they need to hold onto hope for _something. _Even an anchor as unsteady and exhausted as him.

* * *

Downstairs, Hinawa and Flint speak together in muted, exhausted tones. Their hands are clasped in a gesture of love, even as they wade through a murky topic of conversation that sits heavily across their familiar kitchen table.

Together, as are many couples in this evening dotted throughout houses finished or otherwise in Tazmily, the travel-weary husband and wife speak on equal terms, weighing the pros and cons of a decision their neighbors want to vote on in the coming days. One regarding the Hummingbird Egg, and the problem of what to do now that Leder's now-public confession to the townspeople has informed them all of what they never knew they left behind…

* * *

Upstairs, Claus, and eventually even Lucas fall asleep. They're still lying on the bed with Ninten nestled in alongside them, not having ever bothered to ask him to return to his own.

Ninten is glad for it. He's always been a touchy-feely person, has missed more than words can express being part of a group or a family where he can reach out for the familiar warmth of another person with his hands or his PSI on a whim, just to know he's not alone.

These two aren't his sisters, not his closer-than-self companions that waded with him through the darkness at Holy Loly. But Lucas and Claus are what Ninten has. They're his friends, if they'll have him. Ninten cares about them. He cares about their family. Their village. Their world, as small and limited as it is.

It really might not be as much world as the small, tightly-knit family that took him in like this deserves. But, Ninten vows, he won't let their home of these Nowhere Islands die again, won't let them be subjected to so much pain here like that another time if he can help it.

Not so long as Lucas lets Ninten keep trying to build this world, at least, into one that Lucas could be happy in. The villagers here all trust Lucas and his decisions after saving them, Ninten reasons. The villagers believe thanks to him the world can be made better this time around.

Why shouldn't Ninten believe the same?

Long after the twins have dozed away, Ninten ruminates on this, and other things. He stares open-eyed at the ceiling late into the morning hours and still doesn't try to sleep. He's had enough of that for one lifetime, he thinks.

He closes his eyes and concentrates instead.

* * *

When the residents of the new Tazmily wake the following morning, it's to the welcome sight of a weak, but shining sun.

* * *

_end._


End file.
